Member review

Dead man walking is about a convicted murderer on Death Row and a nun who befriends him. Throughout the film we see the portrayal of finely drawn characters and their interactions as the days count down to the condemned man's execution. While Matthew Poncelet (Sean Penn) and Sister Prejean (Susan Sarandon) desperately try to gain a stay of execution from the governor or the courts, scenes are intercut with flashbacks from the brutal crime, these flashbacks gradually reveal the truth about the events that transpired.

I personally enjoyed the film and the narrative of the story it made me feel many different emotions towards the character of Mathew Poncelet played by Sean Penn. The performance given Penn is great as when he meets the nun for the first few times he does not give much away and tell her very little but as the days get closer to his execution date he begins to open up to her more and more and they seem to form a real bond, this bond is quite strange between a murder and a nun which makes it all the more special. You can really see the character of Sister Prejean grow throughout the narrative of the film as she begins to change her opinion and feelings towards the convict. One scene that I can highlight as definitely me responding emotionally to was a scene towards the end of the film when Mathew Poncelet admits to murder and rape. The great acting in this scene made it feel so real and also feel bad for the convict even though he had done these terrible things and had Nazi tattoos covering parts of his body. It shows that in a scene that the audience probably shouldn’t feel bad for the criminal as he is confessing to his crimes somehow you are made to empathise with the character. The reason I gave the film a 4 star rating out of 5 stars is because I believed that it took a while for the film to actually get going and during this time I did not enjoy it as I thought it was quite slow and boring. However as the film went on I began to enjoy it more and understand the narrative better, I believe this is because the pace of the film picked up towards the end.